


Unframed

by you_idjits



Series: another form of art [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Cas is a regular artist, Dean is a tattoo artist, M/M, apparently i can't write anything but fluff this week, first kisses!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2297813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_idjits/pseuds/you_idjits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas-the-super-hot-artist invites Dean to his apartment. To see his art. Dean's in way over his head, but he's kind of okay with that.<br/>This definitely counts as a first date. Right?</p><p>(Part 2 to this guilty pleasure artists!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unframed

Dean gets a call four days later, when he’s standing in the kitchen with Sam, arguing over whose turn it is to do the groceries. He takes it as an excuse to shove the responsibility on Sam, then shove him out the door. The phone number is unfamiliar, but he answers.

“Hello?” he says.

“Um,” says- _wait._ Is that Cas? “You said I should call.”

“Y- yeah, hey. Cas, right? Enochian-the-language-of-angels dude?”

“I suppose that would be me. Is this a good time?”

Dean licks his lips, glances out the window to see Sam grumpily driving off. “Sure. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” Cas says, “when we were discussing art, I realized- I had the chance to see yours, but. Well. If you’d like to see mine?”

And it’s maybe the most stilted proposition Dean’s gotten, but it’s also kind of sweet. “You’re serious? Your art?” Dean feels a grin spread across his face, his mood going from grumpy to giddy in three seconds flat.

“I have a good portion of my works, both finished and unfinished, in my apartment. If you wanted to come by… Dinner would be included.”

Jesus, it’s like he’s planning a business meeting, not a date. “Sure. I’d like that. Can I come over now?” There’s a moment of hesitance, and he realizes maybe he spoke too quickly. “Uh- I mean, shit, that was a little forward of me. Tomorrow?”

“No,” Cas says slowly, “now is fine.”

Cas rattles off an address, Dean leaves a vague message on the fridge for Sam, and then he’s on his way to Cas-the-super-hot-artist’s apartment.

He takes the apartment stairs two at a time, has to compose himself before he knocks. Wipes a hand over his jaw, runs it through his hair. This is really happening. Jesus.

The door swings open. And it’s a little awkward at first, the nervous energy humming between them. Cas looks good. Really fucking good. He’s got that rakish look about him again, wild hair and a five o’clock shadow. His skin is splattered with paint, but his clothes are unusually clean. Dean wants to sling his fingers in the belt loops of those jeans and-

 _Fuck._ He might be in a little over his head. “So. Can I see your art?” Dean has to remind himself several times that he’s good at this. He’s Mr. Smooth.

Cas shows him. The whole fucking apartment might as well be a canvas, with the way he’s treated it. Books, clothes, paintbrushes strewn everywhere.

“I,” Cas says. “I was going to clean up. But then you asked for _today_ , and…” He shrugs.

Dean ignores it, crosses to the wall. A row of unframed paintings hang there, mostly portraits. On the opposite wall, rough figure and motion studies in charcoal. “These are all yours?”

“Yeah,” Cas says, coming to stand at Dean’s side. He’s warm; Dean can feel it even with the empty air between them. “They’re not like your tattoos, not at all, but I like to think all artists can have a mutual appreciation for art.”

“They’re- they’re _really good_ ,” Dean says, because they are. The portraits are his favorite, he thinks. Dean doesn’t know anything about art, but Cas’s style reminds him something of Van Gogh. The colors are more muted, more blended, but there’s something familiar in the manic application of paint. In some places it’s applied generously, gobs of it thick on the canvas, and elsewhere in thin, flat strokes.

But there’s something haunting about the eyes. They draw the focus, complex and harrowing in their rendering. Dean feels the intensity digging underneath his skin even when he looks away.

He looks at the last one in the line, a young woman. Rich, red hair and ghostlike eyes.

“My sister, Anna,” Cas says.

“You’re- I mean, my tattoo stuff, that’s nothing like-”

“Don’t put yourself down, Dean.” Cas fixes something stern on him. “They’re too different to compare.”

Dean looks at Cas and thinks he’d very much like to kiss him. But he doesn’t, because it’s still early in the evening; instead, he crosses to the other wall.

Cas is as good with motion as he is with stillness. He’s no grand master, no virtuoso, but he has a deftness with art that Dean admires.

“I have some works in progress,” Cas says, “if you’d like to see. They’re in my bedroom.”

“In your- in your bedroom?”

“Yes; if you wait here I can go get them.”

“Right, yeah, of course.” Mr. Smooth.

Cas pads down the hallway, tugging at the belt loops of his low-slung pants as he does. Fuck, those are huge on him, slipping off his hips. And Dean realizes, slowly, that Cas put on his _nice_ jeans for Dean, his clean ones. The only ones he doesn’t get paint on: in other words, the only ones he doesn’t wear, because they don’t fit.

Well, that’s not a problem. If things go well, they won’t be on for much longer anyway.

Cas reappears with a sheath of papers in his hand. He shoves the clutter on the coffee table to one side, spreads out the sketches.

“I’ve been experimenting with gouache,” Cas explains, like Dean knows what the fuck that is. He only works with one medium – ink.

Portraits again, but rougher this time, hazy edges and half-drawn features. More experimental, more abstract. And then- Dean blinks, not sure he saw correctly, and slides one paper out from all the others. Cas turns a violent shade of red.

“Is this me?”

“It’s- um. Yes?”

“You drew _me_?”

Cas rubs his hands nervously. “Your facial structure is. Well. I couldn’t stop thinking about you- _it._ It. That there was just a warmup sketch to get the idea out of my head.”

“Is this your way of telling me I’m hot stuff?”

Cas regains his composure, straightens. “You’re lukewarm stuff.”

“Thanks. Yeah, thanks for that.”

“But I’ll say this much: if you were willing to sit for a portrait, I wouldn’t say no.”

Dean looks at it, looks at the way Cas has flattened the curves of his face into geometric planes, all half-finished lines and vague crosshatching. The lines are a rich, dark green. He swallows the lump in his throat.

“That, uh, I could do that.” He sets down the thin paper. Cas looks at him for a few seconds too long.

The moment oscillates, and then it shatters. Cas gets to his feet.

“I’ll start dinner,” he says.

Dean takes one last look at the sketch, the familiar shape of his face outlined in an unfamiliar way. Then he pushes it back under the rest. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m starving. You want help?”

Cas, it turns out, has a pathetically empty pantry. It comes with being in school, he explains. Which, yeah, Dean gets. He and Sam were getting low on food too, hence today’s earlier argument. But Cas has, like, _nothing._ A box of pasta and some dubiously old red sauce in the fridge.

“Cas, man,” Dean sighs, looking at the expiration. “Next time you ask a guy on a date, make sure you can feed him.”

Cas pauses, a small smile breaking on his face. “We’re on a date?”

“Uh- aren’t we? Shit, I thought-”

“No, no, that’s fine. I just wasn’t… sure.”

Dean crosses the small kitchen to hover at Cas’s elbow. “That’s okay?”

Cas laughs, elbows Dean gently. “Yes, Dean, it’s okay.”

“I mean, after this – if you want – I’ll take you on a real date. You know. Dinner and a movie, the works. Flowers, if you like.”

Now he really laughs, throws back his head and everything. “I’m not a flowers person,” he says, “but I’ll take you up on that offer.”

Dean likes this. He likes how easy it is, how happy it makes him. Cas is making pasta in clean jeans and there’s a splotch of yellow paint behind his ear. Dean thinks he could get used to this. And that should be a scary thought, when they’re this new. But he’s weirdly okay with it. Slipping into this – it feels like slipping underwater.

He quietly watches Cas cook. He thinks about reaching out, wrapping himself around Cas. Thinks about pressing his lips to the curve in Cas’s neck. There’s a tenderness in his feelings here, something soft and precious about them.

He likes Cas’s hands: long, tan fingers, paint-stained nails, curled softly around the wooden stirring spoon the way they would around a paintbrush. He likes Cas’s eyelashes. He likes Cas’s upper arms. He likes Cas’s lips. He’d like to kiss them.

“Cas,” Dean says, softly, like he’s holding something made of glass. “Can I kiss you?”

Cas’s fingers fumble the spoon, and then he’s turning. And he’s putting both of his hands on the sides of Dean’s face, and he’s kissing Dean sweetly. The water is boiling over but they keep kissing, and Dean wraps his arms around Cas’s waist and lifts him onto his tiptoes, and Cas’s lips are soft and warm and giving. And giving. And giving.

Yes, Dean thinks he could definitely get used to this.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In the notes for the first part of this verse, I said I wouldn't be writing fluff again.  
> ...oops
> 
> ALSO I KNOW I'M SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON THE COLLEGE KIDS 'VERSE GUYS I'LL GET TO THAT THIS WEEKEND I PROMISE  
> I've been working on and off on this piece for like 3 weeks though; it was high time I polished and published it.  
> Also finished another ficlet which will get posted tomorrow.  
> And then college kids on Sunday?  
> Crossposted on [tumblr](http://shootingstarcas.tumblr.com/post/97405950631/unframed)  
> I'm having a productive week. Which is kind of a new and good experience.


End file.
